Heat moves along its gradient.

If you did nothing, the waste heat would heat the basement, rise up into and through the floor, and heat your house anyway.

"is it recommended" implies that the wisdom of crowds (a) exists, b) applies, c) is correct.

What do YOU want to do? That's all that matters.

I've run my own mail server for over 20 years. I enjoy it, and its nice having my mail sit in my basement.

+1 to this.

I find in the IT field that people who run their own mailservers are significantly better engineers than those who do not.

Google the model number, buy stuff.

Go outside and do yardwork. Play with the dog. Read a book. Wait for the ISP to fix their shit.

WD Reds in a RAIDZ2 pool on FreeBSD, serving Samba.

I enjoy having my own SMTP server that I control.

Begging the question.

Also, "Reverse proxy, VPN, Cloudfare bullshit" - you don't need these things.

None. Why would you use a VPN ?

I don't run any containers.

I own my own data.

I back up my own computers.

My email is mine.

You don't need to overcomplicate it, it's not a competition, and you don't have to do what everyone else does.